


where we are on the ladder

by whalersandsailors



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Canon Compliant, Carnivale (The Terror), During Canon, Light Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Rare Pairings, VERY brief but just a heads up, an attraction that is more reciprocated than tozer expects, brief mention of gore, but before it all goes to hell and burns, getting up the courage to talk to his CRUSH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-26 04:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19760605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalersandsailors/pseuds/whalersandsailors
Summary: The anger trickles down, as softly as a mountain stream trundling ever downward. Officer, marine, or seaman; they are all helpless to stop it.





	where we are on the ladder

**Author's Note:**

> 100% inspired by rubysharkruby's beautiful gifsets of these two. Their dynamic is neat, and I really hope this fic at least partly does that justice.
> 
> Also: Welcome to rare pair hell, everyone.

The cracks are there, as fine as a spiderweb lace creeping through the porcelain of old china. Tozer sees this, the night Captain Crozier orders the lashing of three of their men—each good, able men making good, sound decisions.

When the first lieutenant’s voice booms through the lower deck, calling all to attention for the punishment, a ripple moves through the men, stemming from the quiet fury emanating from Crozier’s second. Tozer does not stare, though he desperately wants to—Edward Little’s anger a fascinating, if unexpected thing.

He recognizes it, as easily as he would recognize himself. Tozer did not make sergeant by running his mouth, but every time he questions the wisdom of the fools that lead them, it festers like an oozing wound.

As the cat whistles through the air and as the sick squelching of skin makes his stomach turn, Tozer risks a glance toward the lieutenant. Little’s face betrays more than is proper as he glowers at the floor. A single twitching muscle pulses under his eye. The captain is too inebriated and unsteady on his feet to notice. His eyes are trained solely on the boatswain and Hickey.

Dragging his eyes away and forward, schooling his expression to a careful blankness, Tozer wonders what will kill them first: the monster on the ice or one of their captains. He wonders if Little thinks the same, if that is the source of his anger. Are even the officers daunted by fear, the lack of routine and predictability?

The whip lands again, and Hickey bites back a wet cry.

The anger trickles down, as softly as a mountain stream trundling ever downward. Officer, marine, or seaman; they are all helpless to stop it.

* * *

In the weeks that follow, Tozer finds his attention inexplicably drawn to Little; a kindred spirit, in ways that Tozer can only begin to guess. He wants an opportunity to speak with the lieutenant, if anything to sate his curiosity, to see if Little is as compelling as his daydreams have made him.

His chance comes in December, during forenoon watch, Little bundled in slops and a scarf that obscures his face as he paces the deck, ensuring the integrity of the canopy is strong and that none of the swollen ropes have snapped from the cold.

Tozer uses whatever excuse he can to break from the other marine and trail behind their acting commander, while the true captain convalesces underneath their feet from some mystery illness, hidden away in the great cabin. Little is toward the stern of the ship, and Tozer keeps his tread light as he comes up behind the man.

(He has watched Little for weeks now, and tempted as he was to approach him during the preparations of Carnivale, Little was never alone, always accompanied by a fellow lieutenant or _Erebus_ ’s commander.)

Despite rehearsing the words in his head for days, Tozer feels a bundle of nerves that he would be loath to admit to even his closest mates on the ship.

“Lieutenant Little, sir,” he says with a nod of his head, uncaring if Little sees the gesture or not.

Little does a double take when he turns to look at the sergeant. His eyes are dark pools above the heather knit of his muffler, and his brow is dusted with frost. The lieutenant nods in return before his gaze slides back to the never-ending expanse of white before them, dimly lit by the grappling twist of aurora overhead. Tozer once found the phenomenon a thing of beauty. Now, the sight makes him uneasy, causing a cold sweat to break out along his spine.

Tozer keeps his lips tight as he speaks again, each sliver of air that slides down his throat burning cold.

“Did you pick out a costume before you gave the men the trunk?”

Tozer himself had picked through the contents with Corporal Hedges, both of them excited for the first time in weeks over what they recognized fully as a distraction but a welcome respite nonetheless. Little does not immediately respond but eventually shakes his head as he shifts his weight on his feet.

Buoyed by the half-conversation, progress if he said so himself, Tozer steps a hair closer to Little so that they are shoulder to shoulder.

“Oh, shame, that,” he says, keeping his tone light, unassuming; “Are you going?”

“I haven’t decided,” Little says with a shrug, his voice dampened by the scarf.

“You’d be missed if you didn’t,” Tozer confides, the sentiment more his own than the men’s, but should the half-truth compel Little to do as Tozer wants, he can justify the slight manipulation.

After all, witnessing Little fold deeper into himself the longer they are surrounded by the icy wasteland, Tozer sees him more for the man than for the rigid, unassailable lieutenant that he had been for the first year of the voyage. Toward the top of the ladder himself, Tozer knows how lonely the past two years have been.

Tozer now stands close enough that their sleeves brush against each other—nearly unnoticeable through the slops, but the contact is enough that Little turns sharply. The light of the lantern behind them reflects in Little's eyes, shadowed as they are under his eyebrows, raised high on his forehead.

Looking back on that morning, Tozer will find it easy to blame the lurid glow of the aurora overhead or the sinister grin of the crescent moon. Perhaps it is the exhaustion that has crept into each muscle and bone below his sternum. Or more truthfully, it may be the lack of company, no gentle hands to caress his back and neck, that leaves Tozer wanting and unthinking.

Thus when he nudges his arm against Little’s with more purpose, and when the lieutenant does not move away, Tozer finds the smile on his face lose its edge.

Little’s voice is muted, but he does not look away when he answers. There is a soft melody in his accent, a slight nasal inflection that Tozer has never heard before but that he instantly locks away into the reserves of his memory.

“I’ll think about it, Sergeant.”

* * *

What Tozer lacks in eloquence of writing (never has he been one to keep a log or write letters, when he has someone to receive his scribblings), he relates instead in the form of storytelling, commiserating with his fellow marines, or—especially of late—indulging a private confession to his old friend Heather, where Tozer sits on a stool beside Heather’s inert form in an alcove of the sick bay.

He has finished trimming Heather’s nails, so he fidgets with Heather’s shirt and the blanket covering him as he speaks.

“There was a girl back home. Not a doxy, I know what you’re thinking.” He pauses, grinning. “She was a rare beauty; dark hair with eyes black as pitch. Word around town was that she was loose, but I couldn’t say. I was a boy, old enough to look, but too young for much else.”

The truth was that the woman garnered people’s poor opinion by being what the townsmen deemed prudish, overly modest. In the market, the gossip concealed by the goings-on of the day, some claimed that she was deviant, of a Grecian inclination. Tozer was too green to understand the full extent of the vicious rumors, but she certainly was beautiful. Her starlit eyes and wide smile, teeth cleaner and straighter than other girls of the town, attracted attention.

Beauty, it would seem, was as much a curse as a gift.

“I don’t know what happened to her,” Tozer says, though he is slowly piecing together the fragmented narrative as he looks back on it. “I know there was talk of her going to live with a cousin in the city. And one day, she upped and was gone. No one talked about her anymore.”

Tozer imagines for a moment that Heather can respond, a grunt of understanding or a nod of his head. He was one of the smarter marines, they _all_ knew that, and Tozer’s blatant affinity for the man was no secret either.

He leans close to Heather as his eyes search the man’s stiff face, the two dots of red pinning the eyelids in place.

“I don’t see no shame in it,” he confides, as his hand drifts closer to Heather’s chin, grazing along the wiry gray hairs of his whiskers. “If she _had_ gone with her cousin, why should I care? I see no harm in it.”

Heather is still, the only movement the gentle sway of his hammock as Tozer leans heavily on his shoulder.

Tozer sighs, sits back on his stool, and rubs a knuckle against the underside of his chin.

“We all get lonely. Don’t we?”

* * *

Tozer looks for Little when their procession of men leave _Terror_ for the half mile walk to the Carnivale. Pressed from all sides by tin soldiers, witches, ragamuffins, and two-footed animals, he cannot discern the identities of the men surrounding, least of all the brown-eyed officer that he is most keen to see tonight.

The sergeant himself has joined the festivities by donning a costume reminiscent of a medieval knight, a soldier same as him. He enjoys the irony of it and added the finishing touches of a hooded cape and a ridiculous paper crown. When Hedges teased the choice of headwear, Tozer laughed easily and said it was to match the crown he had made for Heather, whose only other dress for the night was his formal marine uniform.

Hedges slings his arm around Tozer’s shoulders, and the two of them grin like eager boys, swaying in anticipation of the night’s revelries. They trail behind Daly and Wilkes who help the gun-room steward hoist Heather, strapped to a narrow stretcher, through the crowd.

The marines are toward the back of the ground, so Captain Fitzjames’s voice is devoured by the dozens of excited men before his speech can reach Tozer’s ears. Though what he says is hardly of concern to Tozer, and he joins in the eruption of raucous cheers as the entrance to the Carnivale tent is pulled aside. In four rough lines, the men stream into the rooms, each crafted and designed to provide all manner of merriment, with nothing to remind them of the icy horrors surrounding them.

The temperature inside the tent is several degrees warmer than outside, aided as it is by the many burning braziers and cookstove set up in the kitchen. The heat from the kitchen is intense enough that Tozer feels lightheaded as they pass through the canvas to the long tables set up in a poor man’s imitation of a feast. Wall and Diggle must have arrived early because the pair are already sandwiched between the stove and two cauldrons, bent over their respective stews and griping at each other with every other stir of their spoons.

Tozer helps Armitage prop Heather up in the corner, and the other marines duck out toward the center of the tent where the crews had constructed a race track.

_“And who will be racing?”_

_“Three-legged races, and the like, I reckon.”_

_“No, we’ll have horse racing, you dumb shite.”_

_“Not unless you’re the one offering to be mounted.”_

Once Heather is situated, Tozer pats Armitage on the arm. “I’ll leave you to it, Tommy. Take care of him.”

The food before him is inviting – the dressed up contents’ of Goldners tins and the rum, still watered-down though less so than their daily grog. But as his eyes sweep along the tables, Tozer is restless on his feet as he ventures back to the large common room. The carpenters erected a shallow stage on the opposite end. Tozer knows some of the men have been writing and rehearsing a skit that they said was in honor of Sir John. Tozer heard enough of its lines to know that the skit was far from flattering to the expedition’s second, so brave and timely as he thought that was, Tozer figures it is best for the lads’ backs that Captain Crozier is sick on _Terror_ and will not witness the biting satire.

For now, however, a few men have taken the stage with their fiddles and flutes – even a small guitar – and strike up popular tavern songs. Again, Tozer’s eyes scan the crowd, and he starts when he sees a dark officer’s coat and the gleaming brass buttons, but there are papier mâché wings spanning from shoulders too narrow to be Little’s. Tozer navigates the crowd, shouldering his way closer to the officer, but when the man turns, he reveals his bearded face as the sanctimonious Lieutenant Irving. Quickly, Tozer makes a sharp right as though he were headed to the line of kegs, snorting to himself at the young lieutenant’s choice of costume. Once he is farther from Irving, he surreptitiously lifts his gaze over the revelers. With no sign of Little, he fills one of the mugs to halfway and finds a crate to lean on.

There is a sudden hush toward the stage as a couple of the seaman heckle one of their mates to take the stage. Tozer squints, watching as a slight man with lank brown hair sits on the edge. He smiles, a bit embarrassed, as there are scattered cheers and wolf-whistles.

“Come now, John!”

“Give us a song, Morfin!”

Morfin tugs at his kerchief before he closes his eyes and starts into a slow, gentle melody that floats over the heads of the men nearest the stage. A stanza into the song, the fiddler joins in. The croon of the fiddle undulates under the mournful cadence of the sailor’s voice. The hushed reverence expands from the stage through the rest of the room, conversation trickling to a stop, as though the performance itself were sacred. Shouts and laughter pulsed from the other rooms, but here by the stage, for a brief and plaintive few minutes, the sailor’s voice carried the men far from the Arctic, to the blustery moors of England, lush forests and rushing rivers, the whispery crash of waves on the shore, sunlight breaking through wet clouds overhead, a hand held tightly, a lover’s kiss upon their cheek, a desperate yearning for home.

There is silence after Morfin and the fiddler end the song before a burst of applause ripples through the crowd. Morfin bobs his head, a shy but pleased smile on his face as he steps down from the stage. Another man comes forward, grinning as he clasps Morfin by the back of his neck and presses their foreheads together.

Tozer cannot help but stare at them even as the stage erupts in noise when the band starts a livelier shanty with overenthusiastic and offkey singers. He recognizes the other man as _Erebus_ ’s carpenter Mr. Weekes, but Tozer does not interact enough with the other ship’s crew to know their habits, or their more intimate connections.

Another Erebite leans on the crate beside Tozer, a marine whose name he cannot recall and whose form is shaped awkwardly by his issued slops spilling from underneath a poorly tailored milk maid costume. The man cranes his head to see Weekes and Morfin move from the stage toward the canvas wall, with Weekes’s arm curled around the other’s waist while they walk.

The Erebite snorts. “We all know Morfin takes it up the arse, but I can’t believe they act like that where we can see.” He gulps some of his drink down. “In front of officers, no less.”

Tozer turns to his neighbor, looking past his aproned shoulder at the room beyond. He expects to see Irving, the man’s face twisted into a scowl, but the angel wings are nowhere to be seen. Instead, Tozer sees a familiar, imposing figure toward the entrance to the room, dressed only in his great coat and welsh wig, his arms dangling at his sides, face pale and uncomfortable.

Through some fantastic stroke of luck, Little’s eyes meet his across the room, and shy of turning away, Little steadily holds his gaze.

There is a certain freedom to indulging this attention, across a crowded room where none is the wiser to the two men as they examine each other with searing scrutiny. Heat flushes Tozer’s cheeks the longer Little stares at him, dragging his eyes up and down Tozer’s form. Perhaps Tozer should feel foolish that he enjoys the study, given the costume attire for the evening. Or rather, he supposes, it should be Little who stands out, with the bold, unbending arrogance of an officer.

Little is the first to look away, but before he can leave the room, Tozer downs the remainder of his drink and makes his way toward the lieutenant.

Amid the chaos and the increasing volume of the bawdy pub song wafting over the room like an echoing war drum, Tozer moves almost silently to Little’s side. When Little notices him, surprised by the sudden lack of distance between them, he does not flinch, but his eyebrows raise an inch higher on his forehead.

Alcohol emboldens Tozer, stripping him of any usual reservations. He leans close to Little.

“I half worried you wouldn’t come, sir,” he says, only loud enough for the lieutenant’s benefit.

Little inclines his head, his eyes shifting from Tozer’s face to the stage and back to a distant point beyond Tozer’s ear. “It’s good for morale.”

That startles a laugh from Tozer, and unthinking, he claps a hand onto Little’s arm. Little’s dark eyes bore into his, and with a cough, Tozer removes his hand only for Little’s reaching fingers to graze along his retreating sleeve. His gaze drops, searching Tozer’s face.

“Will it harm morale for our acting commander to have a drink?”

His quip earns him a tiny smile, a mere tugging at the corner of Little’s mouth, and Tozer stamps down the fluttering in his stomach by smiling widely and nodding toward the entrance to the next room.

Tozer brushes their shoulders together as he walks past Little and holds the flap open for the other man. The kitchen is quieter than the theater, but there is still a precious lack of privacy. Tozer hurries to refill his mug as well as retrieve a second one as Little hovers uncertainly by the wall. He accepts the offered mug with murmured thanks.

With a glance toward Heather and Armitage in the corner, Tozer suggests, “Let’s find somewhere private, shall we?”

Whether the lieutenant hears any of the insinuation in those words or not, something dark flashes across his eyes, and his lips part infinitesimally as he nods. They do not move far, finding a gap between two of the rooms of painted canvas. The air is colder here, drafting from the cracks, but they are hidden from prying eyes.

Little’s willingness to follow Tozer here makes his heart beat faster, but he keeps a smile on his face as he lifts his mug to salute the man.

“You said you would think about it,” he says, resting the lip of the mug against his chin as he deliberately slides his eyes down Little’s body, visible even in the limited light.

“About?”

“A costume.”

Little frowns at first, but with a scoff and another small smile, his face relaxes.

“I hadn’t the time,” he says with a sip of his drink.

“Oh, excuses,” Tozer chides, a melodious cheer filling his voice. “That will not do, not for a man as high-ranking as you.”

Little drinks again, his widening smile nearly hidden by the mug. Buoyed by Little’s clear pleasure at the jokes, Tozer bends down to set his cup on the ground before placing both of his hands at the edge of the crown on his head. With mock ceremony, he slowly removes the crown and presents it to Little.

“Now,” he says with a nod to the crown, “if I may.”

He steps forward, and after five long seconds, Little lowers his head for Tozer to place the crown. Once it is balanced over the welsh wig, Tozer rests his hands on Little’s shoulders and leans enough back to assess the officer with his newly christened Carnivale disguise.

Squeezing the muscle of Little’s shoulders through the thick wool of the coat, Tozer nods. “That will do fine.”

Little’s chin is still dipped, his eyes looking to the ground. Tozer thinks that he should move back now, retrieve his drink, make another joke to ease the tension that has begun to radiate from the man.

It is a strange dance, this friendly flirtation that he has begun with the lieutenant, and the more that Little seemingly reciprocates, the more that Tozer finds himself feeling risky.

Little’s hand reaches to Tozer’s sleeve, and he wraps a hand around his wrist. But rather than pulling Tozer’s fingers off his shoulder, Little simply holds on and steps closer to Tozer, the space between them shrinking to inches.

Cautiously, as he might do with a spooked animal, slowly as to not frighten Little away, Tozer inches his hand up the span of the lieutenant’s neck and brushes the tips of his fingers against the edge of his whiskers. A shudder shakes Little’s shoulders, and he exhales sharply as he closes his eyes. 

A wall stutters, crumbles, and begins to fall – brick by meticulously crafted brick.

Strong, able hands grab Tozer’s hips, and the space between them diminishes as Little pulls their bodies flush. His eyes are still shut, and the furrow in his brow looks painful. Tozer pushes his nose into the hair along Little’s jaw and breathes deeply. When the man’s tremors worsen – Tozer is kind enough to assume it is from the chill – he nuzzles the skin of his cheek above the line of coarse facial hair. He presses his lips there, on a freckle so pale it is hardly noticeable. Little still shakes, but his hands move from Tozer’s hips to his back. Before Tozer can pull away and speak, Little tightens his hold and buries his face into Tozer’s shoulder, where his neck connects with the meat of his shoulder.

He should be ashamed, Tozer thinks wryly, for how his mind races to the later hours of the evening; his leading the lieutenant to the table with the seamen and marines, his beckoning Little from the cloister of naval hierarchy, the inevitable jibes from his friends when Tozer leaves early with Little close behind him, and their walk back to the ships under the glow of first sunrise.

Here, as Little latches onto him, Tozer wants only to take him back to his cabin. He can see it perfectly in his mind, the two of them folded around each other in the narrow berth, not as commander or sergeant, but only men, their skin pink and glistening, mouths open, hair tangled, where they would rut until they felt something other than fear, other than duty. It is not a fully realized fantasy, but the mere thought of it sends a fuzzy warmth through his loins and down his legs into the soles of his feet. It evokes a memory of something like home, familiarity, and comfort. One night of forgoing the navy’s strictures, and Tozer could suspend his fear that he will not live to see green shores again. They may die tomorrow, for all Tozer knows, the truth of which rips into his chest with a shrieking, hollowing pain.

Standing in the narrow space between the tents, Tozer decides to take his chances. He uses his hand to guide Little’s face up, and there is that flutter in his stomach again when he sees the lieutenant’s dark eyes open and trained on his mouth. Little closes the distance first, and the touch of their lips is simply that, a gentle contact, a testing of waters. Tozer palms the back of Little’s head and parts his lips. A whimper breaks from deep in Little’s throat when their tongues touch. Were Tozer a pettier man, he would have pulled away and teased, but with Little’s fingers curling on his back and clinging through the many layers of cloth, Tozer closes his eyes and angles his head to meet the lieutenant’s kiss with more force. Little’s trembling has only lessened, not ceased, so in a blind attempt to soothe him, Tozer slides his hands under the edge of the welsh wig where he can pet the skin and sweat-slicked strands of hair on the nape of Little’s neck.

A muffled shout from the other side of the canvas wall startles them, breaking them apart. Someone drunkenly falls into the wall and balloons the rough fabric, too close to them for Tozer’s comfort. He leads Little away from the wall. Little’s eyes are black in the near-darkness, and he is breathing hard, leaning on Tozer.

The moment is over, whether either of them like it or not. Tozer releases a soundless chuckle through his nose and gently taps his knuckle against Little’s chin. He kisses the corner of Little’s mouth, biting gently at the skin before pulling away.

“Let’s go back before someone misses us.”

Little returns to the kitchen first, gripping both mugs in his hands and pausing long enough to send a final, fleeting look as Tozer lingers behind, allowing himself a few minutes of solitude. Tozer plans to wait out the evening, as long as he can stand, getting as drunk as he can, before he’ll pull Little’s ear to his lips and invite him back to the ship. He doubts that Little will refuse him, and the realization of that excites him.

He emerges from the dark space between the tents in time to see Little crossing the room and pushing in between Erebus’s ice master and two other men. Tozer frowns as he recognizes Mr. Jopson first and the captain—bleary-eyed and bundled in slops—second. The men are standing before Little as the lieutenant apologizes, Crozier silently appraising his second before scrutinizing the room around him. Quickly, Tozer looks away as he feels the repulsed grimace on his face. His eyes briefly meets Sam Crispe’s, who sits at one of the tables. Even as Tozer faces away, he can see Crispe’s eyes follow the path of the captain and his steward as they move deeper toward the race track.

Tozer drops himself onto the bench at the table, pulling one of the plates closer to him without even registering its contents. He glances over his shoulder in time to see Little hesitate at the door, the crown in his hands. He takes a half-step toward Tozer, his eyes downcast, and his mouth moving but no words forthcoming. He glances up long enough for Tozer to see the unspoken apology in his eyes, but when he sets the crown on the table and leaves the room, Tozer grits his teeth and fiercely stabs the mystery meat on the plate with a fork.

* * *

Tozer gravitates to Little when the officers round up the men for Captain Crozier’s speech, whatever shit he plans on spouting to them now. Tozer keeps his hands crossed before him, easily stepping from his role as Tozer the man to Tozer the marine in a split second.

Little keeps looking at him, but every time Tozer sees in his periphery the man’s profile turning toward him, he glares at the ground with stronger intensity. The captain’s words fall on his ears like hailstones, distorted in Tozer’s head except for the damning proposal that the crews will walk for land come spring.

He finally glances at Little, but the man’s face is upturned toward the captain. One of Little’s hands clenches and unclenches nervously at his side. Like rope pulling and securing a ship moored in port, instinct tugs at Tozer to touch the back of that hand, to calm it, but though the space between Little and Tozer is narrow, the line dug in that space is deeper than before, redrawn by forces outside of them.

The rope frays, and much as he desires to hold it in place, damn his hands, damn the bleeding as the coarse hemp blisters and burns his palms, the rope snaps.

* * *

One step. Breathe. Smoke and ice, a mixture unsuited for anywhere but hell. Second step. Breathe. Try to forget the pain in your lungs and the ache in your feet. Do not think about how you looked forward to this night. Do not think of the blame you share for tonight’s amassed carnage. Third step. Breathe.

Tozer has not known warmth like this since they left Greenhithe, but the heat is riddled with the stink of burnt bodies, of men he knew and liked. Breathe. His throat constricts when he inhales the residual pall of smoke and the piercing odor of death.

 _Erebus_ ’s commander walks among them like a ghost while they count the dead. Tozer does not, cannot, recognize the corpses as human. The charred remains are little more than gnarled limbs and too-bright teeth.

Heather is among them, the crown missing from his head where portions of the brain have spilled onto the bloodied, smoke-stained ground. Tozer feels his torso clench and saliva flood his mouth, but there is nothing more for him to heave, his body wracked and empty. Bringing Heather had been his idea. It had been his foolish, stupid idea.

The sun rises, but the sight of it fuels Tozer’s nausea.

Automatic as a toy soldier, a clockwork mechanism hammered into his spine between the shoulder blades, he walks the perimeter of what remains of the Carnivale tent, and when Little approaches him, he brings his knuckle to his forehead and nods.

“Sergeant Tozer,” Little starts, his voice hoarse from breathing smoke and barking commands, “I need you to go back to _Terror_ and keep the peace. Captain Crozier and I will finish assessing the damage, but we need the men calm.”

He does not fully look Tozer in the eye as he speaks, and the words are stilted as though the lieutenant rehearsed them in his head before approaching him. When his eyes finally meet Tozer’s, there is a mask obscuring the depths of Little’s stare, and Tozer feels himself separated from his own body, watching himself perform an impressive pantomime at a distance.

“Yes, sir,” he hears himself respond from miles away.

He salutes again and accompanies a small band of men back toward the ship.

He resists the urge to look back.

The sun sets.

**Author's Note:**

> check me out on [tumblr](https://whalersandsailors.tumblr.com)!


End file.
